Monday, October 3, 2016

Join Host Virginia S Grenier on the World of Ink Network Mondays for the Author Spotlight show on October 3, 2016 at 8pm EST - 7pm CST - 6pm MST - 5pm PST.

The Author Spotlight show brings readers debut, best-selling, award-winning authors every Monday. Host Virginia S Grenier will not only talk to our guest author about their recently released books but also what the inspiration is behind the book and much more.

Our Guest This Week Will Be:
Mona Haynes who is a wife, mother and grandmother! She has over 25 years experience in early childhood development. Mona enjoys working in the ministry with her husband who is a pastor. She loves her family and friends three dots.

Be sure to follow us at our blog, Facebook and Twitter. Also, look for all our World of Ink Network hosts on Facebook and Twitter. The World Of Ink Network has endeavored to create radio shows geared toward excellence in the reading/publishing community. As our company has grown to a viral reach of nearly two million, we have decided to step into a new and exciting adventure. If you'd like to be on our network or need commercial advertising, marketing and writing help, please visit our website http://worldofinknetwork.com

As always you can listen to any of our shows live or on demand, at any time you'd like here on Blog Talk Radio, Facebook or iTunes. If you would like to chat with the host or our guests today, you can call in, the phone number is (714) 242-5259 or post your questions and comments in our live chatroom or on Facebook or Twitter using #WorldofInk.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

World of Ink Network is happy to announce their debut show Sunday Reads. It will air every Sunday at 8pm Eastern.

Join Host Virginia S Grenier on the World of Ink Network Sunday for the Sunday Reads show on October 2, 2016 at 8pm EST - 7pm CST - 6pm MST - 5pm PST.

Sunday Reads is a live book review show every Sunday with Host Virginia S Grenier. She will share her thoughts on the books she is currently reading, as well as, touch on literacy. Authors, publishers and experts in the field of literacy may guest on the show. Grenier will also share an information or tips to help build better readers in our homes and community.

Be sure to follow us on our blog, Facebook and Twitter. Also, look for all our World of Ink Network hosts on Facebook and Twitter. The World Of Ink Network has endeavored to create radio shows geared toward excellence in the reading/publishing community. As our company has grown to a viral reach of nearly two million, we have decided to step into a new and exciting adventure. If you'd like to be on our network or need commercial advertising, marketing and writing help, please visit our website http://worldofinknetwork.com

As always you can listen to any of our shows live or on demand, at any time you'd like here on Blog Talk Radio, Facebook or iTunes. If you would like to chat with the host or our guests today, you can call in, the phone number is (714) 242-5259 or post your questions and comments in our live chatroom or on Facebook or Twitter using #WorldofInk.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

When I started this blog in 2010, it was a way for me to get myself back into writing after having my daughter and closing Stories for Children Magazine after a successful run. I did a lot of different type of blog posts and then I got busy with other things and didn't keep up with blogging the way I had when I first started out.

Fast forward to six years later and I'm coming back to the basics of what this blog is about with a few new twists. Frist, I'm a mom. I love being a mom and I love doing things (even crazy things) with my kids. My two girls are starting to get into YouTube and are making videos, which I produce for them. So you may catch one of their videos on my blog from time to time.

Second, I'm an author. I love to write books for kids and teens. I may one day try my hand at adult novels, but for now, I'm writing what makes me happy. I'm working on a few different stories and it is tough to find the time to write, but I'm making that time. Because writing takes time and a lot of hard work and tears, I plan on sharing those trials right here with all of you through posts like this one or through a Vlog post. (For those wondering what a Vlog post is, it's a YouTube video of me talking instead of writing my thoughts.)

Third, I love to read and I love helping other authors reach their dreams, too. So I will from time to time share a review, interview or post about another author and their book. After all, if it wasn't for all those awesome authors out there, I woudn't be writing myself.

Fourth, I'm a World of Ink Radio Personality. So yeah, I'm gonna share about the shows I'm hosting and other hosts are doing at BTR's World of Ink Network.

Lastly, I love sharing about life and things I love outside of my awesome hubby, kids and writing life. So don't be surprised when I share something totally unrelated to all that. Hey, it's my blog, I can do what I like with it, and hopefully, you'll take something away with you, too.

Friday, September 2, 2016

The World of Ink Network brings you shows each week on topics such as books, writing, author interviews, self-help and much more.

Join the discussion Friday, September 2nd when Host Virginia S Grenier chats with picture book author "K" Stone about family Christmas traditions and her latest picture book, "Santa's Secret Wish." The call in number is (714) 242-5259

You can listen to the show on September 2nd at 12 noon Eastern - 11 am Central - 10 am Mountain - 9am Pacific or on demand once the show airs live.

"K" Stone has a background in early elementary and middle school education and is a teacher of young minds. Stone was awarded 1996 Teach of the Year from Chesapeake Public Schools. She strives to strengthen families by sharing fun practices that will increase wonderful childhood memories.

Be sure to follow us at our blog, Facebook and Twitter. Also, look for all our World of Ink Network hosts on Facebook and Twitter. The World Of Ink Network has endeavored to create radio shows geared toward excellence in the reading/publishing community. As our company has grown to a viral reach of nearly two million, we have decided to step into a new and exciting adventure. If you'd like to be on our network or need commercial advertising, marketing and writing help, please visit our website http://worldofinknetwork.com

As always you can listen to any of our shows live or on demand, at any time you'd like here on Blog Talk Radio, Facebook or iTunes. If you would like to chat with the host or our guests today, you can call in, the phone number is (714) 242-5259 or post your questions and comments in our live chatroom or on Facebook or Twitter using #WorldofInk.

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Serious readers routinely look up any words they do not know. But there are also “intuitive” readers, who figure out a word just by reading the context in which the word is used and look up its meaning to fully grasp the writer’s meaning. I've heard some call this wishful thinking and the GrammarBook.com recently posted on this exact topic. Here is what they shared.

The three examples below are sentences you might find in print or online. Each contains a possibly unfamiliar word which, if misinterpreted, sabotages the meaning of the sentence.

• On a blistering August morning we came upon a 1960 Buick coruscating in the sun.

Understanding coruscating is the key to understanding the sentence. The Intuitive Reader ponders the word, with its echoes of corrosion and rust, and concludes that the car was falling apart. A reader’s first impressions matter, and this reader now is picturing a broken-down old wreck. But coruscating means “sparkling.” In fact, the car in the tale has been lovingly maintained by its owner. The reader now has a distorted view of the author’s main character, and may well go on to misread the intent of the story.

• What we heard on the demo sounded like a bashful lad with a limpid voice.

The Intuitive Reader doesn’t have to look up limpid to know that the kid on the demo can forget about a singing career. You can’t make it in the music business with a “limpid” singing voice, for what else could limpid mean but “weak” or “lifeless”? But the reader has it wrong: a limpid voice is pure and crystal clear. The kid’s future looks bright. If he can sing in tune, and his material is strong, he could go places.

• The man was in a parlous condition, and a lot of his friends headed for the exit.

Intuitive Readers know what parlez-vous français means, and they know that parlance is a style or manner of speaking. So to them, this sentence might appear to tell a cautionary tale about a “parlous” fellow who gets a proper comeuppance for hogging the conversation one time too many. But in reality the situation is far darker: parlous means “dire” or “precarious.” This man is in trouble. He deserves our compassion, and his fair-weather friends deserve our scorn.

Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier or less time-consuming to look words up. Those who refuse to do so are in constant danger of missing the point.

What are you thoughts on looking words up or just using context to figure a word out? Do you think we need to teach this type of reading style to our children so they become better readers?

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

As an author, I'm asked a lot in
interviews or when I meet someone, "Why did you start writing?" I've
given a few different answers to this question over the years. The most common
answer really is how I began my writing career, which is this: I used to
work full-time in the fashion industry as a buyer. I moved from California to
Utah as my husband, and I decided this
gave us the opportunity for me to be home with our children, instead of gone,
traveling or working long hours in an office while private schools and daycare
became our kids lives. However, going from working to not working as a
stay-at-home mom just isn't me, and so I
took a writing course, loved it and so my writing career began.

Yes, this is the how I started writing,
but what really made me fall in love with writing and for that matter reading
books, too, I have to get a little bit more personal for the first time ever.

As a kid, I was never a big reader.
Sure I read the books assigned to me in classes over the years by my teachers,
but I never had a bookcase in my bedroom loaded with books. I didn't travel to
the library every week with my family to check books out either. My parents did
read. My dad mostly read his flight manuals as he was an airline pilot and my
mom loved romance novels by Daniel Steel and Dana Fuller Ross. At least this is
my strongest memory of my parents and the books they read. I do remember my
mom, not my dad so much (sorry dad) reading me a few kid's books like "The
Monster at the End of the Page" (one of my all time favs), many of the
Golden Books and A Little Critter Books, and of course, Dr. Seuss books.

However, it wasn't until high school
and college where I really found my love
of books and a certain type of book.
Realize I said type of book, not genre. See, I
love a few different genres, as most readers do, but there is a running theme
in the books that stick out in my mind as my favorites, and this is something I
never really gave much thought to until last night when I found myself having a
hard time sleeping after something that happened during the earlier part of the
day.

See in my first year of high school,
my English teacher assigned us to read a book called, "Lord of the
Flies." The book blurb is this: Lord of the Flies is a dystopian novel
by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding about a group of British
boys stuck on an uninhabited island who try to govern themselves with
disastrous results.

After reading "Lord of the
Flies" I was more than happy to see what my teacher would assign next in
class for us to read. She had us read, "Great Expectations." The book
blurb is this: Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It
is his second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first
person. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it
is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal
development of an orphan named Pip. The novel
contains some of Dickens most memorable scenes, including its opening, in a
graveyard, when the young orphan Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel
Magwitch. Great Expectations is a graphic book, full of extreme imagery,
poverty, prison ships ("the hulks"), barriers and chains, and fights
to the death.

I loved these two books, and I still remember how I felt reading
them. I'm sure my teacher assigned others, but these are the two I remember
most clearly from that first year of high school and still love to this day.
The following year of high school, my English class was assigned to read a few
books, but the two that stand out in my mind still today are, "The Grapes
of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men," both written by John Steinbeck
and amazing books.

The Grapes of Wrath is set during
the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant
farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship,
agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out
of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are
trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with
thousands of other "Okies", they seek jobs, land, dignity, and a future.(blurb
from Wikipedia)

Of Mice and Men is a controversial
tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression. They are an
unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie,
a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a
"family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.

Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they
can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to
own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on
a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be
within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict
the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught
him.

There were many other books
throughout high school and college, and later in my 20's I feel in love with
the Harry Potter series and a few others since. I can go on and on about the
books that have stayed with me for years and are considered my most treasured
reads, but if you noticed the type of books I love have themes about diversity, the human spirit and humanity as a whole, along with other things too, of
course. Why do I love books that touch on
diversity, the human spirit and humanity?
I can personally relate to them and each of the books I consider a favorite, rings with truth about some very
sensitive subjects we all face every day: Prejudice, Racism and Closed-mindedness.

I say we all face these every day
because everyone does at some time and on some level. Yesterday was first-time my 12-year-old
was faced with prejudice. Before I share
what happened, I first want to share the definition of prejudiceis:

preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

As I mentioned before, I moved to
Utah from California to have a family and be a stay-at-home mom. But like most
families, we like to go on vacation, and of course, visit family back in our
home state of California, where we just happen to be vacationing when this
happened:

On a trip to the
store to buy a few things so my girls could enjoy an afternoon of baking
chocolate chip cookies with their Grandma Twinkie, my 12-year-old daughter was
faced, along with me, with a group of young adults who have a very negative
opinion of Latter-Day Saints or what many know as Mormons. Yep, they saw our Utah license plate (as they were parked
next to us) and couldn't keep from making a few very rude comments about
Mormons. My daughter first asked how did they know. I first had to explain how many people from other states, including
California, assume everyone who lives in Utah is Mormon. Not true by the way
and here is a fact: there are less Latter-day Saints in Utah than the State of
Nevada the last time I checked.

She then asked me why would someone
hate us because of our religion. Now that was something I thought I would never
have to explain to my own kids. Nieve? Yes! Why? Because I hadn't run into this in a very, very, very long time. Actually, I hadn't had anyone give me a hard
time for my religion since I was in high school back in the earlier 90's. The thing is, my daughter, not understanding didn't have
anything to do with her being born and growing up in Utah. It really didn't
have anything to do with me not preparing her for something like this happening
one day to her. She didn't understand because most, and I do mean about 50% of
her family, isn't Mormon. We have Mormons, Catholics,
Church of Christ, and I'm sure many other religions, in our family tree from
grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and so
on. She also has friends of many faiths back home in Utah, and it has never been an issue before. But, here I am, seeing this look on my daughter's face of
complete sadness and hurt. It broke my heart.

Now, I didn't say anything to the
young adults, and it would have been
pointless anyway. I'm not 100% positive, but most likely from my own
experiences they would have been closed-minded to what I would have said anyway
or it would have just given them cause to continue to believe in what they did
about Utah and Mormons. (Definition of
closed-minded: having or showing rigid opinions or a narrow outlook.)
Hopefully, one day they will be more open-minded and less prejudiced towards others.

Now, some reading this may think I am being a certain why, but remember, prejudice means having a preconceived opinion
that is not based on reason or actual experience. I've experienced this kind of
thing more than once in my life. I've even experienced racism throughout my
life so I'm not writing this light-heartedly,
and I really hate being so open and
personal, but I felt the need and drive to be in this post.

Okay, so I'm sure some are now
wondering how could a blonde, white girl, from a middle-class family (most likely) know about racism. Guess what?
That was racist. Just because I'm blonde
and white doesn't mean I don't understand racism or that someone or a group of
people can put me into a stereotype. The definition of racism doesn't say if you are
only in a minority class/race this can only happen to you. The actual definition of racism is:

the belief that all members of each
race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so
as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. (Keyword: ALL, this
means all groups, races, etc. can be racist towards another race, group, etc.
no matter if they are the majority or minority.)

I've been stereotyped because of my hair color and skin color for years. What
many don't know is this. I didn't always live in the nicest of neighborhoods.
At one time in my life, I even lived in low-income housing for some years in Los Angeles County because my mom was single (my parents
were divorced) and she was the only one supporting us (myself and her) on a bank teller's wages. One year, she couldn’t
afford to buy a Christmas tree or presents. (Sorry dad to paint you in any way. Please know I love you no matter what
the past is.) I know what it is like to have people judge me because my skin
was different and I didn't fit into the
neighborhood I was living in as I was one of the few white girls in my school
and apartment complex. I also have seen my friends of color and sexual
orientation be treated with cruelty and
lack of respect as well by others. I've cried because no one wanted to be my
friend because I wasn't like them. I've had kids wanting to beat me up because
I was white and not of their race. I've had people hate me because I didn't
date white boys, was Mormon or I didn't
want to hang with the popular white girls,
and so on. But this is what I faced growing up. You wouldn’t know it by looking
at me.

Fun fact: my family was surprised I
even married Justin, a blonde, white guy. Seriously! My son's biological father
is mostly Phillipino and Italian, with
some other races mixed in. My family (I’m
totally guessing so I could be wrong) most likely thought I would marry someone
from a different country because I tended to lean that way all my life growing
in friends and boyfriends.

The fact is, you don't know me, and I don't know you. By judging you or you
judging me by what you see or think you see is just wrong. The experiences I
had as a kid, young adult, as a single
mother (before my awesome husband) and
the one I just had with my daughter yesterday make me who I am. Experiences make
us all who we are, to be honest.

These
experiences are also why I love to read the books I do and why I fell in love with writing after I took my
writing class back when my daughter was just a small baby in my womb. Reading
and writing keeps me from being
closed-minded. It keeps me honest, and it
keeps me from judging others. Reading and writing helps me to fall in love with the world I live in, it helps me
understand others who are different from me and it allows me to see things from a different perspective than my own. It also allows me to challenge my thoughts, views and experiences and
gives me a broader range of life.

This is why literacy is important
and why I love doing what I do now. My life is enriched because of the books I
read and through the stories and articles I write, which I couldn't do if I
didn't surround myself with the world in whichwe all live in.

So the next time you find yourself
thinking or saying something about another, stop and think for just a moment
about being in that person's shoes. You may learn something new and different,
instead of just being prejudiced,
closed-minded and racist.